


I died in your arms tonight (I survived everything else and not you)

by ninemoons42



Series: love and blades: a rebelcaptain AU [4]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - James Bond Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Assassination, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hurt Jyn Erso, Inspired By Tumblr, Inspired by Music, Inspired by Real Events, Inspired by a Movie, Poisoning, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt, by which I mean modern era spy story violence, written in the style of Casino Royale 2006
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 17:24:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11605341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Cassian Andor finds himself having to flee the scene of the perfect crime that was masterminded by the Partisans and the Alliance, but only because Jyn Erso can't actually walk away on her own.





	I died in your arms tonight (I survived everything else and not you)

Quick steps past several tables full of stiff-faced people in their stiff starched collars and their stiff Botoxed smiles, and then even quicker steps past the woman who’s giggling with a bevy of men who’re all towering over her in the dark corner tucked next to the bar – Cassian Andor spares a few moments to smile to himself, because the woman’s the shortest person in her group but she’s far and away the best-dressed: she’s wearing a suit just like her companions, but she’s wearing a sparkly bow-tie and vivid lipstick, black on the upper lip and blue on the lower, and her short hair is falling out of its product and its pins. When she laughs, deep dimples appear at the corners of her smile; when she waves at the roving bartender with her tray full of drinks, the woman in the suit shares out the bottles of beer, and keeps the three margaritas for herself, defiantly colorful paper umbrellas against her pinstripes and the immaculate white of her dress shirt.

At least, Cassian thinks, at least that one table’s having fun, and he’s guessing that’s the table that didn’t come here for the fusty cocktail party: he lets himself imagine things, just for a moment, and he wonders if the woman and her companions won’t be running off to some other engagement after the speeches at this one are over and done with – some other engagement with, with karaoke, perhaps, and more congenial companions and surroundings. Much harder drinks, perhaps. (Beers and margaritas and some really bad champagne are all they’ve got here, and he still wants to wash the taste of sour insipid bubbles out of his mouth.)

Just a moment to dream and to maybe see if he couldn’t tag quietly along for the fun, before he gets to the mercifully empty bathroom. Before he has to snap his mind back to the real reason for tonight’s shiny cufflinks and tonight’s just-the-right-kind-of-garish tie and tonight’s frozen smile.

The bathroom is all black tiles and white grout and floor-to-ceiling mirrors up against every wall, unisex features trimmed in red tinsel and fake swags of holly, and he shoots an insincere smile of apology at the man and woman who’re trying to right themselves from their disheveled state as they exit.

He locks the door behind them. He takes the extra measure of hanging a “Closed for Repairs” sign on the outside doorknob, and slaps an extra temporary lock on top of the bolt. 

He stares at himself in the mirror. At the silver strands at his temples that are very definitely false advertising. Somewhere along the way, he thinks, he got a little lucky, and he won’t be going actually gray any time soon. It’s the genetic lottery at work and for this particular trait he’s won a small jackpot, and he’ll take it. 

The fake white washes out of his hair with just a few pats of a wet paper towel; he can’t quite scrub the scum of what he’s about to do away from his hands, from his fingers, which are even now reaching into the special pockets of his jacket. A faint clatter of plastic parts across the expanse of the marble counter, and taking care not to let any of those little components fall into the basin. The parts of a gun, all carefully machined from plastic: not even a new trick in any sense of the word, because he remembers watching the climactic sequence of _In the Line of Fire_ and that just proves that there’s nothing really new in the world of spycraft and underhanded dealings in the dark. He’s just as disguised as John Malkovich’s character ever was, and thinly as that, and yet a little hair dye and a little putty on his face seem to be more than enough to bamboozle the plainclothesmen dotted around the edges of tonight’s party.

Hair dye made of inorganic compounds, and the claylike density of the putty. A plastic gun. And even the bullet, when he digs it out of its little foam cushion, is plastic: and that’s the goal, here, to make a projectile out of a material that won’t drive those ubiquitous and completely useless metal detector arches and wands haywire. 

Some bullet, he thinks.

Clear plastic, designed to fragment and wound when it hits human skin even at the low speed of a point-blank shot, because the clear plastic is not as important as the little hollow it conceals within.

A hollow full of batrachotoxin, still one of the deadliest substances on this entire planet, and with the added bonus of having been tinkered with so it quickly gets broken down into innocuous organic compounds, so it can’t even be identified as a poison, in only a few minutes after it’s done its lethal work.

The Partisans seem to be harboring a mad scientist in their midst – only a madman would have the courage to tamper with batrachotoxin to make it even deadlier, and only a madman would think to make that poison decompose nearly instantly after delivery.

He remembers getting the little orange bottle in a mail drop to this city’s anonymous and wholly temporary apartment, because he remembers the scent that still lingered on the white child-proofed cap: like ocean breezes and pine needles, like sun-warmed sand and the embers of burnt-out lavender branches.

Better than a signature or any kind of bona fide, he thinks, and that’s a dangerous thought indeed in this shadow world that he lives in, when nine times out of ten he can never be sure of what Agent Stardust – Jyn Erso – might be doing when she crosses his path, trailing that signature scent.

He knows they’re on the same side, tonight.

On the same side until he pulls the little plastic trigger on his little plastic gun, and fires the little plastic bullet full of frog-skin poison into tonight’s political target.

After that, he has no idea.

He makes sure to keep the plastic assembly high and dry – the idea is for him to dissolve the whole thing in the running water of the sink after the deed’s done – and he makes sure to keep his back to the security cameras in the ceiling, although he’s supposed to have some kind of technical oversight that means someone’s messed around with the surveillance within this entire building. 

Just another reason for Agent Stardust to be here.

Faintly, he can hear the music start up again from the direction of the cocktail party, and the DJ is playing his song, and the lights in the bathroom dim – that’s also part of tonight’s plan – and someone knocks on the door.

Cassian holds his breath.

Listens for the correct sequence.

Four heavy knocks, two light knocks, and a complaint in Catalan: _Canten molt malament._

Cassian almost wants to smile. No one is singing tonight. All the music is coming from one DJ and her nearly inexhaustible collection of tracks. He remembers catching a glimpse of her as he’d come in, vivid in bleached-white hair and the single blue lock stuck to her cheek with sweat.

But the man that Jyn is pulling towards the restroom can’t know that. (Cassian’d had his people check, recheck, and triple-check the man’s background, and there had been quite a few snickers when it turned up that the target has never had any interest in learning any other languages other than those he’d grown up with.)

So there’s the signal, and there’s Jyn on the other side of the door, working the “Closed for Repairs” sign off the doorknob: time to get in position. Time to throw all the locks open, time to hide himself behind the swinging leaf of the door.

The lights in the cramped room shine on the sweat sheening Jyn’s skin, on the hard angles in her upper arms and shoulders, on the slack bow of her mouth.

Something is very, very, very wrong.

And Cassian forgoes the plan: he thrusts the door shut, locks it in place. Grabs their target by the scruff of the neck in one hand. Cocks the gun in the other. He only barely remembers to train the muzzle on the man’s bared skin, but his muscles know to hold the gun rocksteady as he squeezes off the single shot.

The man actually manages to break away from Cassian’s grip, actually manages to roar out an obscenity in Filipino, before he suddenly goes completely rigid, before he suddenly falls to the floor as though every muscle has been slashed and torn away from the bone – which, funnily enough, is exactly what batrachotoxin does. 

Just out of that man’s reach, Jyn collapses to her knees. The glass beads crusting her dress catching and shattering the light in the room as she shivers violently.

Cassian forces his eyes back to their target, forces himself to watch as the paralysis takes hold – as the man who used to be the only thieving and murdering scion of a thieving and murdering father begins to gasp desperately for breath – and he waits, impatiently, for those desperate breaths to slow and slow and falter – and then he moves towards the sink. Throws the black-glass stopper into the drain and fills up the basin with cold water. Rapid jerking movements as he breaks down the gun, as he sweeps the fragments into the swirling contents of the sink – and as soon as the plastic dissolves he pulls out the stopper, and watches the liquified gun gurgle and slosh away and out of sight.

He steps over the target, rigid and soon to be a corpse if those fright-maddened eyes are any indication.

How his hands remain steady as he pulls Jyn to him – her sweat-soaked back against his front – he doesn’t know.

“I’ve got you.” That’s all he knows to say. All he’s got for her to hear.

She gasps, she twists in the loose circle of his arms as though she were a landed fish, her heels drumming against the floor, and his heart is beating wildly, fit to burst from his chest as she seizes his collar in one spasming hand. “They got me. Enemy agent – entourage -- ”

“Antidote,” he makes himself say.

She doesn’t answer, not in words: with the same clawed hand she guides his fingers to the necklace that she wears.

He tears at the thin leather cord and he’s holding a crystal in his hand – only it’s not really a crystal, or it’s not just a crystal. A vial of some kind, neatly disguised as a rough-cut quadrilateral prism with irregularly faceted ends.

He doesn’t think: he just fumbles for the cap on the thing, not an easy feat with Jyn making him even more unsteady than he already is, and finally he manages to open up the vial. Manages to force Jyn’s head back so she can drink what’s inside the vial and not choke on it, or have it go down the wrong way.

He still spills the murky green liquid past the corner of her mouth, the liquid sloshing around wildly, before she’s making the terrible convulsive effort to swallow.

When she goes limp and unconscious in his arms, he nearly cries out – some kind of sound does emerge from him, harsh, and he will never be able to know whether he was about to say something he’ll eventually regret – and all he can do, numb with shock, is hold her to his heart.

Bang, another series of knocks on the door – another prearranged signal – on the other side is a man in a black jacket with a high collar, buttons marching diagonally from his throat to his shoulder – he frowns, tilts his head, says, “Come with me, quickly.”

Cassian recoils from the seemingly helpful expression, the outstretched hands. “How do I know you’re with her?”

“You don’t. But trust me: her life is safe in my hands.”

“I don’t plan to let you take her,” he growls.

“I’m not. I’m asking you to follow me. I’m the getaway driver.”

There’s nothing for it, and the man seems to prove that he knows the venue inside-out, when he gets Cassian and Jyn around all of the suits and all of the dresses without anyone looking at them twice. Down a series of stairs and then through a fire-exit door, and then there are city lights splashing the rolling hills and the sinuous coast of the city, sprawled out beneath Cassian’s feet where he’s suddenly standing on one of the building’s helipads.

The man in the black jacket is already putting on a pair of heavy-duty headphones, is spooling up the rotors on a sleek dark-blue chopper, and Cassian has no choice but to carry Jyn into the passenger seats: he clumsily fastens two of the adjacent seat belts together to go around him and her, where he’s still clutching her to his chest, and then he’s being pressed back into the leather of the cabin, and the city lights swoop sickeningly around him.

“Got Stardust and Rebel,” the man in black is saying. “She’s down for the count.”

Terrifying lurch of Cassian’s heart.

He brushes his fingertips hesitantly over her cheek. 

And she coughs, once, twice. Struggles to open her eyes.

Words fall inanely from his lips: “It’s all right, don’t struggle, it’s me.”

For answer, she winds her hand into his shirt once again. Holds on.

Nothing tender about her white-knuckled grip, he can see that even in the shifting shadows of the unlit helicopter.

He can feel it when she bumps her nose against the lapel of his jacket: a weak movement to be sure, too shaky, but she’s definitely responsive now, she’s definitely conscious now, and she’s choosing to do these things.

So he cradles her even more gently, lets his cheek rest against the top of her head. 

He can’t ever hide her away in some cushioned hideaway to be sheltered from the world. He can’t ever defend her from every single one of her demons. He can’t ever replace her on any of her missions, on all of her missions -- sharp edges and pain and bodies left behind in her wake.

But he can do this, he can hum tunelessly as she presses in close and shivers. The winds buffeting the open chopper stink of salt and all the other things that the ships in its capacious harbor spew into the night-frothed waves. 

The man in the black jacket sets the chopper down with a light touch, and then he’s carefully releasing Cassian from the seat belts. “Go in that door,” he says, pointing to a shadowed block several meters away. “Two floors down, and the code to get into the apartment is one-nine-eight-four.”

Cassian repeats the numbers. Half-falls out of the cabin, all too conscious of Jyn’s weight in his arms.

Jyn manages to rouse herself enough to say, “Mission accomplished. Tell them that.”

“You didn’t have to tell me, _saimúi_ ,” is the response.

And Jyn musters up a whisper of a laugh, in Cassian’s arms.

Cassian makes his way through the door and down stairs, and finds himself in a room of red walls, a room with a ceiling draped in gauzy white. One room, dominated by a four-poster bed, and on the quilt is an elaborately embroidered bird with its massive wings outstretched.

That’s all he sees of the place: the rest is as phantoms to him, because the rest isn’t Jyn – who nearly seems lost on the bed when he finally makes himself let her go, when he finally makes himself lower her to the embroidery on the quilt.

Unopened bottles of mineral water on the black table next to the bed. He’s thirsty from the adrenaline rush and the adrenaline crash, but he cracks open one of the bottles and immediately passes it to Jyn – who, in turn, gulps it all down.

Alarmed, he tries to pass her another: but she shakes her head, and the movement makes the quilt rustle. “Too much and I’ll dilute the antidote.”

And he remembers _why_ she’s in this state. “Someone got you,” he says. “Did you -- ”

“He nicked me,” Jyn rasps in reply. “Don’t know how I managed to shoot him, but – I did. Drilled him right between the eyes. And then I waved that bloody gun at the target and told him to play casual to the bathroom.”

Cassian can only nod, but it seems that she can’t see him any more: her eyes have fallen closed again, but now she’s breathing easy, still on the bed in the way she sleeps, like a ghost, like someone who doesn’t want to disturb the sheets any more than she has to.

Antidote, water, sleep – three of the ingredients to recovery. He should get up and close the windows because she doesn’t like sleeping in the cold. He should see about getting her supplies and then he should see about getting out – he has his own reports to file, he has his own people to see to, he has another mission waiting – there’s always another mission waiting -- 

But he’s pinned to the side of the bed, watching her, making sure with every breath and every moment that she’s going to live, that she’s going to walk away from the poisoning with only the hairy tale and no scars, no after-effects, that she’s going to _live_ \--

It’s a wrench to turn away. To point his face towards the folding wooden shutters, towards the unfolding night and the cold breezes – still with every blink he sees the lines of her face relaxing, going soft as she falls into truly restful sleep.

Still he feels the weight of her in his arms, against his body, poison wracking every inch of her and still she was trying to stay close to him, somehow, some way.

He gets to his feet, still struggling for words, for the strength to leave.

Warmth closes around his hand: warmth and strength.

And she’s so quiet when she speaks, but he can hear her so very closely.

“Stay.”

Hitch in his breath when he whispers back: “My pickup’s before breakfast.”

“That’s still a few hours away.”

He looks back, looks at her, and knows he’s lost.

Knows that he wants to lose – if it’s to her, if it’s like this, that that’s what he wants.

So he strips off his shoes, his jacket, his sodden shirt, his belt, his cufflinks, and watches her shift over to the side of the bed to make room for him.

He lies down on his side, and waits for her to move: which she does. Her arm over his hip and her forehead to his chest. Her steady breaths warming him.

No apologies between them. No reproaches.

He leaves her a note, when he can’t put off leaving her: “Until next time.”

He means: _Next time, when we can steal the time_.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "Tender" at [@therebelcaptainnetwork](http://therebelcaptainnetwork.tumblr.com).
> 
> Look me up on tumblr at [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com)!


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